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Friday, 17 April 2015

Scooters and buses and trains, oh my!

Today was nearly the last day of the Easter Holidays, so I said I would take the Boy out and we would have some fun together.

I picked him up at 8:30 am from Brixton Station - well, as Brixton is rather impossible in the mornings these days, from across the road. Our first port of call was Lidl, to pick up croissants, a pain au chocolat for Granda (aka the Swan Whisperer) and orange juice for a second breakfast. Well, it was my first breakfast, but the Boy's second. He then played here for awhile, and we set out about 10:30, just in time to see the Scissor Lift on its progression round the building to wherever it was wanted today - a very splendid machine. "But it doesn't move very fast!"

Then we got a bus to Herne Hill Station and just caught a Thameslink train by the skin of our teeth, which took us to City Thameslink, where we got out. We walked down Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street, until we got to the entrance to the Temple Inns of Court, which we explored a bit. We couldn't look into the Church, because it was closed due to the Globe Theatre's production of King John there, but we enjoyed the Fountain:

We explored a little further and then ended up in the Gardens, by the eponymous Tube station, where I was intrigued by this plaque, and wondered whether Lady Henry Somerset was any kind of relation (only vaguely):

There is an exhibition about hospital troopships in World War I on HMS Wellington, moored opposite, but further exploration showed us it was only open on Sundays and Mondays so we came away and decided to look for Shaun the Sheep instead. But we missed him, somehow, and as we were getting hungry, we went into the Prets by Waterloo Bridge to have lunch. Then we used the facilities in Somerset House, and on the way out, we saw a no 1 bus at the stop, and decided to go wherever it took us. This proved to be to Canada Water.

The Boy nearly gave me a heart-attack by insisting on walking along a wall that got higher and higher, and I said he couldn't possibly get down on his own. "Well, I'll try my easiest!" he said, but I lifted him down anyway, and have adopted that expression for my own use. We were intrigued by an exhibition of tents, which led us into Decathlon, and I bought myself some T-shirts, and - er - accidentally bought The Boy a new scooter. Well, it was only £13.99, it would have been rude not to! And he has outgrown his mini-micro, and now he can ride a bike ("I'm nearly five!" he says, although his birthday isn't until the very end of the summer term) he was having no trouble at all with even the adult-sized scooters in the shop!

We then got on a 188 to go back to his mother's offices at Senate House, but because of the disruption at Kingsway it terminated at Aldwych, and although we got on a 59, it took aaaaaages and aaaaaages to go round the diversion, and even the Boy's notorious love of buses was tried to the limit! So when we got to Senate House, I needed a cup of tea with the Daughter before getting back on a 59 to get home. I'd planned on getting off at Waterloo and going to IKnit, but it was getting late, and I was tired. So it was fish and chips for supper.....